Gender News articles

Debora Spar is many things: She’s the president of Barnard College. She was among the youngest women to earn tenure at the Harvard Business School. She is the author of six books. She is the mother to three children. By all accounts, Spar is a feminist success story. Yet she also is a self-...

In 1969, a feminist group called the Redstockings published a manifesto on women’s liberation. In it, they emphasized the importance of women coming together and discussing the particular obstacles they faced on account of their gender. They called this process “female consciousness-raising,” and...

In the breadwinner-and-homemaker family, there was a clear division of labor, with men concentrating on work outside the home and women on family. But since the 1960s, when this family form began to break down, many have sought both satisfying paid work and rewarding family relationships.
In the...

Overworked? Overwhelmed? You're not alone. Seventy percent of employed Americans say work interferes with their non-work lives. Over half feel they don’t have enough time with their children or spouses. This isn’t just one group: it’s mothers, fathers, married workers, singles, Boomers, GenXers,...

AMC’s hit show Mad Men has received widespread critical acclaim, in part, for its depiction of changing social mores surrounding gender, work, and family. Set in the 1960s, three-martini lunches, overt sexual harassment, and stay-at-home wives are the norm. The workplace sure has changed…or has it?

Flexible work arrangements are widely championed as remedies for the dearth of women in senior leadership positions. Women “opt-out” when the demands of work and family conflict, so letting them telecommute or work part time facilitates work-life balance, allowing them to stay on the career track....

In April 1933, an anxious nation watched Ruby Bates walk through the door of an Alabama courtroom. Two years earlier, near the town of Scottsboro, Bates and another white woman had charged nine black youths with rape. Juries had readily believed the women despite contradictory evidence, swiftly...

The CEOs of Best Buy, Yahoo!, and Hewlett Packard all nixed flexible work policies in response to financial downturns. “During this critical turnaround period, HP needs all hands on deck,” said Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. “[T]he more employees we get into the office, the better company we...

Two years ago, Occupy Wall Street protestors turned out en masse on the sidewalks of New York City. This began a movement that spread rapidly, drawing attention to the vast economic disparities in modern industrialized countries.